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Jane Carlyle and Sir David Davidson: Belief and Unbelief -- the Ts Ory of a Friendship K CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Scholar Commons - Institutional Repository of the University of South Carolina Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 35 | Issue 1 Article 4 2007 Jane Carlyle and Sir David Davidson: Belief and Unbelief -- The tS ory of a Friendship K. J. Fielding University of Edinburgh Mary Sebag-Montefiore University of Surrey Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Fielding, K. J. and Sebag-Montefiore, Mary (2007) "Jane Carlyle and Sir David Davidson: Belief and Unbelief -- The tS ory of a Friendship," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 35: Iss. 1, 26–43. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol35/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. K. J. Fielding and Mary Sebag-Montefiore Jane Carlyle and Sir David Davidson: Belief and Unbelief-The Story of a Friendship Unearthed from a bank vault, hidden in a box of family papers, is a hand~ ful of letters from Jane Welsh Carlyle to David Davidson (1811-1900), a sol­ dier home from India. 1 Written in rapid dash-linked sentences, peppered with double underlinings, Jane's letters chart a friendship of middle age that was in fact a re-acquaintance. The story of the friendship was, for Jane, a journey from excitement to disillusion-a microcosm of the story of her life, but the letters, which both lovingly dwell on a shared childhood background and sati­ rize the present, were suddenly broken off. They throw a fresh light on her nature, her craving for a sympathetic ear, her restlessness, her prejudices, and a gallant front presented against a barely concealed depression. For, by the time that David and Jane met again, the petted, irresistible child-queen of Hadding­ ton and the sparkling girl who knew that no one less than a man of genius would satisfy her, had declined into a sickly middle-aged woman, who ex­ pressed herself with a sharp, self-deprecating wit that obliquely screamed of cynicism and disenchantment. It was hard for a clever and original woman of the time to find fulfillment when the male horizon seemed limitless; while iQuotations from the Davidson family papers, including some letters from Jane Carlyle, are noted parenthetically as D; those from David Davidson's Memories of a Long Life (Edin­ burgh, 1890) are given in the same way as M; we have used the second edition (1893). Unas­ cribed letters by Jane are from the Collected Letters of Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle, ed. C. R. Sanders, et al. (Durham, NC, 1970-), cited as CL. Jane Carlyle and Sir David Davidson 27 David, who was also clever and original, had found fewer frustrations and greater happiness. Jane bestowed her affections only upon the few who managed not to irri­ tate her. Tall, good-looking, idiosyncratic Major Davidson re-entered her life at a time of acute unhappiness, when her husband was constantly visiting Lady Harriet Ashburton at Bath House. Carlyle was obsessed by his fascinating and formidable "Principessa Nobilissima carissima,,,2 and Jane was confiding her sufferinfos to her Journal, "Oh dear oh dear This living merely to live is weary work?" But her new friendship with Davidson lasted only for four years be­ fore it disintegrated under Jane's impatience. After her death in 1866, it was Carlyle, racked with anguish and perhaps guilt, who cherished a link that had once made Jane happy. "Your letter awakens many thots in me whh are very mournful if also very beautiful, tender and solemn," he wrote to Davidson in 1870. "Indeed yr mere signature, at any time wd do that!" CM, p. 322). David Davidson was the third of nine children of Henry Davidson (1775- 1829). Henry's father had been a coachman who, following the upward Victo­ rian class surge rapidly shook off his origins. As Froude, Carlyle's controver­ sial biographer, observed, "to climb vigorously on the slippery slopes of the social ladder, to raise ourselves out of the rank in which we were born, is now converted into a duty.,,4 Henry became factor to the Fletchers of Salton (or Saltoun), a rich land-owning family, and senior Sheriff-Clerk of Scotland. He acquired a large house and farm in Haddington. On his death, his eldest son, also Henry, reported with pride that his father's funeral had been attended by "almost all the county gentlemen, Lord John Hay, General Stewart ... and about 200 of the most respectable persons of the town and country." (D). Like the Welshes, the Davidson were middle-class and well-to-do, though their sons were dispatched to earn a living as soon as possible. David had a dual nature. He was a combination of passion and self-disci­ pline. He showed disparate talents: at the Burgh School of Haddington he shone in mathematics and engineering, while at home he was tough, a bold horseman, crack shot, a gifted artist and a would-be poet. At fourteen he fell in love with a Haddington girl named Ailsie Boyce, but confided only to his diary the emotions that swept over him: 2Cited by Virginia Surtees, The Ludovisi Goddess: The Life of Louisa Lady Ashburton (Salisbury, 1984), p. 47. 3Jane Carlyle's Journal, 23 April 1856, CL, 30, 246, newly edited from MS. 4J. A. Froude, "England and Her Colonies," Short Studies on Great Subjects, 4 vols. (London, 1867), II, 206. 28 K. J. Fielding and Mary Sebag-Montefiore As I clasped her tiny hand in mine a sudden change came o'er my nature, a new and overpower passion sprang into existence, and filed my whole fame with thrilling ecstasy; the spirit of Love touched the electric train and fired the citadel of my souL (D). Yet his love was ill fated. At sixteen he was sent to Bombay to join the 18th Native Infantry. Young Ensign Davidson was homesick and wrote poems in his notebook to his mother, such as "The Midnight Hour." If not great po­ etry, its pathos is clear: At such an our to gaze on the bright stars On belted Jupiter and blood-red Mars Is pleasing to thin exiled boy, for he Remembered when they glittered o'er his home and thee! (D). Letters came from home, sometimes racy with Haddington gossip. His brother Henry, for example, had enjoyed a scandalous Ball at the Assembly Rooms at Haddington, at which "the Miss Dunlops were throwing about their legs as if they were on pivots." There was a quarrel over a "Bowl of Toddy which crowned Mr Hay in the manner of a Roman Professor," and "the party broke up about 7 o'clock, all dead drunk." But Henry was writing to an in­ creasingly serious young man who was held up as an example to his family. A letter to him from a small brother reads, "It will be my first wish to be as good as you but I am YOUlig." (D). David fantasized about Ailsie as bride-to-be, till he learned of her death from tuberculosis when he was 24. His diary records his dismay: "Doth not the worm, my loathsome rival, feed upon those lips I longed to kiss? Oh God! Oh God! How humiliating the picture." (D). Desolate but somewhat self­ regardingly, he saw her death as a punishment for his loving her too well, and his sole comfort came from an essay by the great Scottish preacher, Dr. Tho­ mas Chalmers. Chalmers was a friend of both David's father and the Carlyles; though, while Jane was proud of him as a fellow Scot, Thomas was to look back on him in his Reminiscences as "wonderfully true and tender," but: all in a kind of rustic type ... essentially of little culture, so ignorant of all that lay beyond the horizon in place or time ... yet capable of impetuous activity and blazing audacity .... I suppose that there will never again be such a Preacher in any Christian Church.s SCarlyle, Reminiscences: A New and Complete Edition, ed. K. J. Fielding and Ian Camp­ bell (Oxford, 1997), p. 251. Chalmers' essay was his introduction to Abraham Booth, The Reign of Grace from its Rise to its Consummation (Glasgow, 1827). Jane Carlyle and Sir David Davidson 29 David, less analytical than either, was instantly converted to Christianity, and fired off intensely Evangelical, later-to-be-regretted missives to his mother: "Did you ever direct me to the cross of Christ? Alas, I must say, never. Pray to our maker that he may give you a knowledge of the selfish na­ ture of your heart." And, "Forgive me for thus speaking plainly, but deep con­ trition and an ardent love for the Redeemer ... are not to be found in any of your letters.... I fear you have not looked to the Redeemer as the Physician of your soul." (D). Almost all his pent up passion was re-centered on religion. Meanwhile, he concentrated on his Indian service and the army. He had become organizer of the Revenue Surgery, which restored to cultivation large tracts of wasteland, and he invented a diagrammatic way of presenting statis­ tics which came into general use. He was popular, commended for "securing the good will of his brother officers and the affectionate regard of natives of every grade." (D). Unlike many of his contemporaries he realized that while it was relatively easy to subdue the Indian population, lasting peace was possible only through mutual respect, and his often original ideas sometimes contra­ dicted the East India Company's guidelines.
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